Remember old Counter Strike? This is for you.

On Youtube, my fav comment was “Is this cs_noob?”.

It’s pretty hard for me to say which games have truly shaped the way I see the medium, but I think it’s safe to say that if Capcom had never existed my interest in games would be a lot more Sims 2 (retarded).

Now, that’s not to say I have anything against people who play Sims 2. I, personally, adored Sims 2 like I adore most every Maxis product, intensely and passionately for about a month, until I’ve learnt all its secrets and got bored of it. If you think about it, that makes Maxis products a bit like a man who looks attractive, plays hard to get, is mysterious and aloof… until you get in bed with him and afterwards he tells you he likes to bite his toenails and that he works at McDonald’s. Sim City 2000 was the one I loved the most passionately, but it felt like once I knew it inside out it would get into bed with me so readily I started to date other games.

But Capcom! Oh Capcom. Capcom Capcom Capcom. Huh…. Cigarette please. It started with Street Fighter really; like most videogame romances. I remember back in the mists of time I went to play videogames at everyone else’s house because I never had a console (until my little bro decided to buy a Nintendo 64 and I commandeered it for investigative purposes) and this meant that my skills with a controller were significantly handicapped from lack of practice. I tried to deny that I was interested in games because of those terrible social norms that constrain little girls, but every time I went to my friends’ places I could hear their SNES calling to me softly from the TV cabinet. My virgin experience with Street Fighter (I think it was SF II Turbo) was when I went to stay with my grandparents in Belfast and made friends with the girl next door, whose older twin brothers, joy of joys, had a SNES. I was less interested in her than the contents of her living room. I often used to reject her company for the company of her older brothers, who in return used to give me a fix of Street Fighter like it was a hot dose of Northern Irish heroin to the vein.

The first meeting of myself and Street Fighter sticks in my mind because of the reaction I got when I picked the controller up to play it. I must stress that I had not played anything but Mario up until this point, and although I liked Mario and his various goomba boppings and bunny flappings, I was not very good at maneuvering his tubby little plumber ass anywhere skillfully. But when I started to play Street Fighter, something almost magical happened. I began to win very easily.

This isn’t an article written to brag; in fact, I am never particularly gifted when it comes to games intuition. I personally like that I am bad at FPS, that I need to learn skills when I start to play a new game, that I have two left thumbs. But when I chose Chun Li (Is she some sort of secret cheat character – did everyone know about this and not say anything?!) and started hopping around the place throwing punches and kicking those svelte legs everywhere I found that my two male admirers’ jaws dropped. I made it all the way through to almost complete the game in an afternoon without losing a fight; my female friend fell asleep on the couch. Her older brothers didn’t believe that it was my first time with Street Fighter. They loved me ever after; their younger sister hated me. I carried on oblivious to everyone’s reactions; it’s only now peering back into memory that I see the sibling rivalry and social politics I caused with my little liaisons with Chun Li.

All Chun Li liaisons aside, Capcom have produced games of a truly stunning and interesting variety since. Who would have thought that a game based on the life of a lawyer, made for the Nintendo DS, would ever make any money? Capcom banked on it and made one of the best point and clicks of the videogame generation, Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney. (And what a brilliant name! Rising from the ashes, a lawyer who comes back from the figurative dead to prove himself and his clients ‘right’… Unadulterated genius.) Phoenix’s perpetual professional rival Edgeworth might even make it into my top ten (virtually) screwable videogame hunks. Are you kidding? Have you seen that moody guy’s ruff? He’s getting his own game in May you know.

Then there’s Devil May Cry. Dante (besides being also fairly hunky, but a little too hunky so that it feels kind of vulgar to like him) has guns AND a giant anime sword, AND he’s a half demon demon-slayer. You can’t get much more crazy than that premise, but Capcom thought it would work… And it does. You rarely lose the feeling that you are a badass when you are playing it. It’s also ass-rapingly difficult so any of your friends who say they can complete it you can automatically accuse of being a dick. That means you, Tarek you PS3 fanboy dick.

But one of my all time favs has got to be Resident Evil. Not since Day of the Tentacle have such confusing and melodramatic plots been such fun… And it kind of brought to our attention this new genre – Survival Horror. You are in a giant fuck off creepy house with all sorts of gross stuff that wants to kill you… and zombies. And meanwhile, there are some inconveniently obscure puzzles to solve in what I would call a shit scarily, piss-in-pants-inducingly terrifying atmosphere. Oh, I should get through that door. Oh there’s a zombie in the room. Wait a second zombie dude while I push these blocks around the floor and put some jewels in this tiger’s eyes.

I have to admit to coming late to what my circle of friends calls “Res Ded Evil” or simply “Res Ded” because I was never on the Playstation bandwagon. We never had enough money to be on the multiple console bandwagon. I was on the Nintendo bandwagon. Shall I stop talking about bandwagons? Essentially, my obsession started with Resident Evil on the Gamecube, which I am not afraid to admit terrified the crap out of me. It ended with Resident Evil 4, which terrified me less, but which I liked for the fresh look and the horror movie homages. I guess if they hadn’t redone the gameplay a little with Res 4 the main characters still might have the maneuverability of rusty WWI tanks, but I still hold a torch for the way Resident Evil used to be really, paralysingly scary. Most of that scary was created by forcing you to reenter rooms you had already had really (really!) bad experiences in just to get a purile flimsy bit of bollocks to solve a puzzle with (aforementioned tiger eyes). I think every time that door loading screen appeared I cursed the makers of the game loudly, almost with a kind of elated horror.

I can’t wait to play Resident Evil 5 through – I am stranded in no console hell right now, waiting for my chance to play through a truly ridiculous plot. Let me know if you think it’s good. I have to be appraised of the scary moment quota. Next, a review of the new Streetfighter, because I love it and so do you.

To Capcom, with love, from Cara xx